How to start practicing Radical Honesty?
Some practical tipps for starting your practice
This week I didn’t know what to write about…
… so I decided to write about something I know a lot about.
Duh! I’m often resistant towards writing what comes easy. And I make my life hard by thinking (!) I need to come up with something utterly mind-blowing and unique every time I type.
So today, I am writing about my work: Radical Honesty.
To be more accurate, I will write about how to start practicing Radical Honesty…
… if you are completely new and never went to a workshop with me.
The Basics of Radical Honesty
Above all, Radical Honesty is an awareness practice.
Susan Campbell, my teacher, once said: You can only be as honest as you are aware.
How true. We can only speak of what we actually notice.
So first and foremost, Radical Honesty is an awareness practice.
Second, Radical Honesty is about expressing yourself in a direct way.
Side-Note: Radical Honesty, of course, does not mean to share every single thought that pops into your monkey mind. It’s also not brutal honesty. The opposite is true: we want to drop below “just thoughts” and include more current and bodily aspects into your communication.
But how to kick-start your Radical Honesty practice?
Starting Small
If you have never been to a workshop, I recommend starting small.
It’s like going to the gym: without a personal trainer and plan, you might end up straining your muscles. Likely, you would not start with 250 pound deadlifts. Along the same logic, I don’t recommend starting Radical Honesty with your aggressive alcoholic uncle. You might shock your system into freeze, and then discourage yourself from trying again.
That would be a pity!
If practiced properly, Radical Honesty can transform your life at the core.
But you might want to start with small stretches, not overstrains.
Namely, I’d say you want to work on the following:
your tolerance for (unpleasant) physical sensation in your body
your ability to distinguish between actual reality and your stories
your noticing skills to include more aspects into your communication
your willingness to value being real over being right (or winning arguments).
Without these, Radical Honesty will only scratch the surface.
Here are some practices you can dive into without much prep-work.
Name your intention
Instead of just small-talking, asking questions or telling stories, how about revealing your intention behind the obvious? Do you want to help someone? Do you want attention? Do you want to be seen in any specific way? Do you want to avoid being seen as incompetent?
Revealing your intention takes away some of the pressure to perform.
Imagine starting a presentation like this: “I am nervous and I want to do this right!”
Before I keep on preaching, here is my intention for writing this:
To increase my SEO-ranking
To convince you to come to my Radical Honesty events
To keep to my routine of one article per week
So you think I know what I am talking about.
2. Reveal some of your pretenses
If you often catch yourself pretending (and want to quit!), try this simple formula:
“Sometimes I pretend to you that I am (happy, listening, interested, etc.) …
… when I am actually (sad, thinking about something else, or annoyed).”
Then pause and stay in the experience a little.
After the 100 or so workshops I taught, I am still surprised that we all pretend in exactly the same ways. Sharing what you pretend does not only liberate you. You give others permission to do the same. If you want a more honest world, the best way is to start with yourself.
It’s also the only way…
3. Ask more directly for what you want.
Kids ask for what they want passionately dispassionate. To them, the process of asking is a reward in itself: an energetic flow in the body. Few adults ask directly for what they want. We go the long, sneaky, indirect way, trying to manipulate our surroundings in our favour.
How about asking directly?
Yes, it’s scary. You might hear a direct “No”. Or sometimes worse, a direct “Yes”.
Ultimately, it’s all just physical sensations in your body.
Here is a little blueprint for how to ask for what you want:
Step 1: State your desire
“I would like to go to the park” or “I want you to cook me dinner today”
Step 2: Ask
“Will you come with me?” or “Are you willing to do that?”
There is more to say on that, and I recommend you watch this video with me and Wheel of Consent founder Betty Martin for the nitty-gritty details.
Radical Honesty needs Time & Practice
Don’t get discouraged. I am still learning Radical Honesty despite teaching for 5 years. At first I thought that I am just not made for this. I thought I should get this right away. When I lived with Brad Blanton on his farm, I overheard a radio interview he did. The interviewer asked:
“But isn’t this difficult to apply?”
Brad’s answer helped me relax about it:
“Of course. You need at least 2 years to revise your autopilot and have honesty sink into your bones. The older you are, the more foreign this might seem at first”.
You worked hard on building that fortress of pretences. It will take some time to deconstruct.
Come join us for a workshop and get the community support and space you need to really learn Radical Honesty and transform your life at the core.
How to be Heard and Seen: The Art of Subtraction!
Do people sometimes don’t get you? Maybe you can be more clear…
Time and again, I felt unheard or unseen.
Somehow, my message did not land. People did not get me.
I thought I was very clear, yet people turned away from me, or stepped over my boundaries.
At first, I blamed the world. Thought I was just too special to be understood.
Then, I blamed myself: I tried to get louder, more eloquent, present, or aggressive. All to no avail.
A breakthrough came when I discovered the world’s oldest language seven years ago.
The World’s Oldest Language
Humans across all corners of the earth share a common language.
This language is older than Latin, more widespread than English. It evokes as many emotions as a Shakespeare play or Rumi poem. Babies intuitively understand it. We are all moved by it. It surrounds us. And most people I know experience joy being talked to via this language. This universal language is music. And today, we consume music mainly as songs.
A song is communication between producer and listener.
Each song carries a message, tells a story, expresses the artist’s inner world, and filters through the listener’s inner world.
Making a song involves different stages.
First, the artist gathers her sonic elements and designs them to taste. Here she discriminates against thousands of options by choosing only a few. Next, the chosen elements are recorded. Then the artist arranges the elements to tell her story. Here she considers factors such as tension, release, and intensity. The listener has to be kept engaged and interested.
Once the song is arranged, the hardest work begins.
Before mastering, exporting, and releasing a finished song, the music producer spends weeks mixing her work.
Mixing music is a subtle, nitty-gritty science. A great mix separates a pro from an amateur.
It can make the final difference between a global chart-topper and a mere top twenty.
There are different mixing philosophies, but one underlying truth:
Mixing is all about maximising musical impact.
When I dipped my toes into the world of music production seven years ago, I finished my first song after a month. When I got to the mixing stage, I hit a wall. I just couldn’t make my lead sound stand out the way I wanted.
I tried a whole bunch of seemingly logical things:
I made it louder, but that distorted the whole song.
I double-layered it with another instrument, but that redlined the volume
I threw more effects on it, but that changed the feel.
I made it more complex, but that altered the message.
After two weeks, I was ready to throw in the towel. Nothing worked. This is insane.
As a last resort, I consulted my friend Patrick.
He’s a seasoned music producer with more than twenty years of production experience under his belt.
He listened, laughed, and said: “To make this element stand out, you have to turn down the rest.”
It’s not about adding more, but leaving out.
The Subtle Art of Subtraction
To my surprise, the difference was staggering and immediately audible.
The problem was not my lead element. It was the noise and unwanted frequencies from the other elements.
Patrick said:
“Mixing is always about cutting and subtracting. This is counterintuitive, as we are all used to adding more stuff on top. But that just waters down our message. Cut all that’s not essential to make the essential ring through.”
It is through diligent elimination that the core message comes through and is heard by millions.
Of course, my first song was heard by not more than a hundred people, but I learned a key lesson.
Leave out all that’s not essential to make space for the essential.
The same principles apply to our daily communication.
How to allow the world to hear you
Rarely, we need to say, elaborate, or explain more. We don’t need new tricks.
The key to being heard is to tune down the noise and cut out the distractions to our core message.
As a rule of thumb, if you force someone to figure you out, they lose interest.
Of course, you have to know what you actually want to say. If you don’t, how about some silence?
If you do know what your message is, eliminate the puffery, vagueness, and mystery.
Say: “I love you.”
Don’t say: “Whenever I am with you I feel like, you know, just very special and we are just clicking and I have rarely felt this way with someone else and I often think about you for hours after we parted but then I tell myself to relax.”
Say: “I want to go eat ice cream. Are you coming with?”
Don’t say: “It’s so warm outside today, right? God. Shouldn't we go for a walk? Hey, there’s that new ice cream place!”
Say: “I don’t agree.”
Don’t say: “I recently read this new article and the writer proposed that we, as humans, should not do such and such. After all, we all should value this much more. I can send you the article, if you want to.”
Say: “I am angry at you, Marvin, for what you suggest here.”
Don’t say: Yeah, but, there is this 18th century philosopher who really thought about this for fifty years and he developed these categories for people and you don’t seem to understand the subtle differences between humans.
In short, cut the noise, say what you mean, pause, and listen for how your sentence lands.
The mix of your life’s symphony will be clearer, cleaner and better heard. People hear what you have to say and actively listen. You will be more in tune with the world if you get direct.
Warning: This direct way of talking very likely leads to enhanced sensations in your body.
Be prepared to feel more and have more time and energy for important things in your life.
